Seeing off the interlopers

More self-serving whinging from the credit hire cowboys this week, as imaginatively named representative body the Credit Hire Organisation moaned on predictably about how the proposals contained in the Competitor’s Companion report into inflated costs in the private motor insurance market will disadvantage consumers and line the pockets of fat cat insurers.

Humbug, we say at Bankstone News. Normally we would probably have said something like Balderdash or Poppycock, but since it’s nearly Christmas… See what we did there!

In the course their unnecessary and nonsensical ‘official response’ to the CC motor report, (a document, frankly, that can be of no possible concern or interest to anyone other than their own members, who may perhaps derive some tawdry frisson from the written confirmation of their own ridiculous prejudices) the CHO argues that the blameless drivers of damaged vehicles, in forfeiting the right to drive around indefinitely in some massively upgraded replacement vehicle while some CHO member rakes in hire charges willy nilly, will somehow be having their precious rights trampled over. It will be like sending motorists back to the stone age and/or forcing them to take the bus while their vehicle is off the road, the CHO expects us to believe.

As if that were not sufficiently absurd, they have also joined the herds of Whinging Williams who maintain – in utter defiance of proper decent common sense – that giving at-fault insurers the right to patch up the vehicles their policyholders have damaged, in whatever manner they see fit, could somehow act to the detriment of the non-fault drivers.

This simply makes no sense. What possible motivation could at-fault insurers have for skimping on vehicle repairs? Why cut corners or rush a repair, when a tip-top job could boost their reputation and that of the insurance industry as a whole. Has it not occurred to CHO that if damaged vehicles were simply lashed together on a budget there would, like as not, be more accidents and more expensive claims to follow (although, thankfully, those claims would mostly impact other insurers’ policyholders).

But, above and beyond such practical considerations, there’s a basic point of principle at stake here. If your child knocked a precious vase to the floor while visiting a friend’s house, would you want to see that damaged vase going out to some unknown and untrusted repairer? Certainly not! Not when Uncle Ted has his trusty Evo-Stick, and will happily do the job for the price of a pint.

It may be an old-fashioned phrase, but it’s what we like to call “doing the right thing”.